Crossed Swords, Crossed Wires
by Glistening Cerulean Eyes
Summary: Sarene and Vasher have been best friends for years. What will happen when a new truth comes to light?
"I just don't understand," Sarene said, closely examining the pink envelope. "Why would somebody send me a valentine and not sign it?"

"Maybe they thought it would be obvious," Vasher said, leaning against the office door and rubbing at a spot of green paint on his shirt. He'd been hard at work helping grade threes make cardboard masks that afternoon, and despite his teacher's apron had struggled to keep himself clean.

"Maybe one of the parents," Sarene said, using her bus keys to cut open the top of the envelope. A shower of love-heart shaped confetti rained out of the opening.

"Whoever it was, they put a lot of work into it," Vasher said.

"Mmm." Sarene pulled out a card covered with elaborate marker love hearts and flowers. On the front flap was a picture of a school bus and the words "You Are Driving Me Crazy" and a winking face, suggesting that this was a playful pun on how she was the school bus driver, and not a desperate plea for help. She chuckled at this apt wordplay. She opened the card and found that whoever had sent it had written a little poem inside.

"It looks like that picture probably took somebody two to three hours," Vasher said helpfully, like a best pal would. "Look at that crosshatching."

 _"Roses are red, the school bus is too,_

 _Just like my face when I look at you,_

 _Maybe one day you will stop mentioning me as only your best friend because that time I asked you out to dinner was NOT A FRIEND THING and I hoped that would be clear when I said, "no, as a date, Sarene," and you were like, "haha, man, of course I'll bring those special dates that I was given as a souvenir from my friend who went to Turkey" and I said not especially and then we went to see The Fast and the Furious 7 together,_

 _Sarene you are making me feel blue."_

"Whoever wrote it knew about my love of free verse," Sarene said.

"Yes, maybe they _know you quite well_ ," Vasher said, adjusting the mug she had gotten him for his last birthday that was on his desk so that it caught the light. It said "Coolest Dude At Swords" from when they'd met at their old university's education faculty's fencing tournament. She'd had it hand crafted so that her name was stamped into the bottom with a love heart.

"If only I hadn't been to see The Fast and the Furious nine times," Sarene said, sadly but not regretting a moment.

"Maybe there's another clue," Vasher said. "For example, is that a lock of hair tied to the inside of the card?"

"Hmm," said Sarene, noticing this at last. It was tied with a pink ribbon—her favourite colour. "Who do I know who has hair like this?" It was dark brown and slightly curled.

"Who?" Vasher said, taking his hair out from its stylish bun and raking his fingers through it so that the fluorescent light shone off his dark brown, slightly curled hair.

Sarene tapped her fingers on the edge of the card. "I don't know," she said, looking up at the staff photo on the wall of the office. "Maybe I don't know them. Oh, Vash, wouldn't it be horrible if I _did_ know them and I'd been ignoring them this whole time?"

"I couldn't possibly imagine," Vasher said, sounding strangled.

"Wow," Sarene said. "I guess this mystery will keep me up at night." She put the card on the desk as she pulled on her fluorescent bus driver's vest. Vasher leaned over and quickly signed the card with the Faber Castle marker he always carried in his pocket while she wasn't looking. When Sarene straightened up, she saw it.

"Oh, it's signed," she said. "Wow, that's a difficult signature to read. How didn't I notice that it was signed before?"

"I have _no idea!"_ Vasher said, cracking open last year's yearbook to the signature page, where his signature was printed next to all the other staff members and propping it on the desk.

"I guess I'll put it with all the others," Sarene said, closing the card. She opened one of Vasher's desk drawers which she used for filing and filed it with the six cards that she'd gotten from previous valentine's days. "I wish I knew who was sending these."

"Maybe they've been right in front of you this whole time," Vasher said, hopping up onto the desk and leaning so that he was directly in front of her.

"Who, though?" Sarene asked. She sighed. "They're so dedicated. I'm sure if I knew who they actually were then I'd reciprocate their feelings." She made a face. "Vasher, why are you headbutting last year's student reports?"

Vasher, face buried in the stack of folders on his desk, pointed towards the window. "Hey, did you see something?"

As Sarene headed for the window, he whipped out the card from the drawer. Apparently, subtlety wasn't going to work. He carefully printed his name below his signature, forming his letters with exacting precision borne of desperation. Then in brackets below, he wrote, _Sarene, seriously, you saw The Fast and the Furious with me for seven of those nine times?_ As Sarene peered out the window he wheeled out the whiteboard and pulled out a set of coloured markers, setting up an elaborate Venn Diagram. Over one circle he wrote 'valentines card' and over the other he wrote 'Vasher,' and then in the space where the circles overlapped he wrote everything the two had in common, which meant there was nothing in the rest of the Venn Diagram. He tutted for a bit about how this affected the balance and composition of the piece, but was willing to sacrifice aesthetics for love. Just this once.

"Thank you for drawing my attention to that rare and interesting bird," Sarene said, turning away from the window with the natural glow of somebody who had just seen a rare bird. "You always know what I like." She saw the Venn Diagram and read it quietly to herself for a few moments. "You're right, that is a funny coincidence, huh? I mean, we've been best friends for years, so you would have just told me, but I can see how somebody would draw that conclusion."

Vasher handed her the card but she was too busy looking at the whiteboard, appreciating his bold subversion of design principles. He gathered up what dignity he had left for a pithy closing remark as he prepared to leave the room and go home and eat an entire tub of ice cream and watch _Love Actually._ What he did instead was remember that he still had to repair the guard on his favourite épée. Aloud, he said, "I'm going home. I need to take care of my sword."

Sarene turned to look at him and winked intensely. "I see," she said. "Do you need any help?"

Vasher flushed. "What—no, I mean, I—" He squinted. "Are you flirting with me?"

Sarene put her weight on one hip, making her bus driver fluorescent vest adhere to her curves. "What gave you that idea?" she said, winking again and then making finger pistols and saying "eyyy" at his expression.

"What brought this on?" he asked.

"You just reminded me that you have an enormous sword, that's all." She ran her hand lightly down his arm, her lowered eyelids making her meaning clear. "If you wanted to score a hit, my guard is down."

Vasher tried to speak, realisation beginning to dawn, but could only make wheezing noises. "Sarene," he said, "do you remember when we first met at the fencing club?"

"Of course," Sarene said. "After my disengagement and fleché, you said, 'hey, it looks like you know how to handle a sword,' and then you said, 'I just realised it's impossible to tell if somebody is winking at you from inside these masks. I'm winking at you. Do you want to go get a drink after this?' and I said, 'Oh, have you got a sword you'd like me to handle, and by the way I'm winking back', and then instead of getting a drink we talked about fencing for three hours, and had to leave when they turned the lights in the gym off. Wow, it sounds like we really had something going there, huh?"

"Yeah," said Vasher, gathering up his smock. "You need to go drive the bus, right? I've, um, I've got something to do in the art room."

When Sarene came back, she found a new card on her desk. She picked it up reverentially, tracing the beautifully hand-written "It Looks Like You Know How To Handle A Sword" with a wink face. Inside the card were lines upon lines of sword innuendos, written in clear teacher handwriting. Below were a line of love hearts and the words, _So, that drink? You said you'd be interested and you've been giving me really mixed signals for like, six years? I hoped that sword jokes would help you understand. Love from Vasher, yes, that Vasher, your best pal._

"Ohhh," she said, her hand going to her mouth. The sword innuendos spoke to her heart, revealing truths that no flirting ever had.

 _P.S, I'm in the art room because in making this card I spilled so much paint, some help would be amazing._

She tore off her fluorescent vest.


End file.
